Why are Contacts so Expensive?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

The question is, do you really want to take that character into your gunfights and try to keep her alive? Because if she's your Ally...that's what you have to do.

What do you mean have to? If I have an AI Ally inhabiting a mainframe back on my home base, and maybe occasionally teleoperating shells (or maybe not), that's an Ally, whom I do not take into gunfights.
Likewise, no reason I have to take my other Allies into gunfights if they stay at home and provide remote support of some sort.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

What do you mean have to? If I have an AI Ally inhabiting a mainframe back on my home base, and maybe occasionally teleoperating shells (or maybe not), that's an Ally, whom I do not take into gunfights.
Likewise, no reason I have to take my other Allies into gunfights if they stay at home and provide remote support of some sort.

Heck, you're not required to take all the player characters into gunfights. It's sort of a roleplaying tradition, but it's not at all mandatory.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Heck, you're not required to take all the player characters into gunfights. It's sort of a roleplaying tradition, but it's not at all mandatory.

Indeed, in the Eggshell campaign, we have one PC who is almost sessile, and plays more like a Voice with an Internet Connection (hacking, advising, analysing etc.).

[Anders]

I just divide all Contact costs by 5.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Danukian

Yes, Sorry, what I meant was it doesn't reflect the other uses of those advantages: If you had Celeb contact with Current Affairs (Celeb) 15, her status 4 and Independent Income 5 mean nothing to you when you want to - as written in the description - ask her for a quick favor, like get you access to someone/something.

That there isn't a number applied to such a minor perk doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The minor favours are whatever is reasonable for the described contact. She can make an introduction, give you a lift to some place she happens to be going, lend you a dress, ask her maid to do someone's hair.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

What do you mean have to? If I have an AI Ally inhabiting a mainframe back on my home base, and maybe occasionally teleoperating shells (or maybe not), that's an Ally, whom I do not take into gunfights.
Likewise, no reason I have to take my other Allies into gunfights if they stay at home and provide remote support of some sort.

Ms Celebutante isn't equipped to provide remote support. When she makes her appearance roll as an ally, she appears in the story and accompanies the character until the end of it (unless she dies) because that's how allies work. Now that could be the character getting constant "helpful" phone calls from her...but probably not and odds are the player doesn't want that either.

[Peter Knutsen]

One argument for making Contacts cheaper is that doing so encourages players to actually choose them during character creation, and based on the assumption that each Contact is a locationed individual with at least some individuality (a name, an ethnicity or a religion, or a distinctive feature of sorts, or possibly even several of these) that serves to tie the player's character closer in with the world in which the campaign takes place.

Making Contacts cheaper thus changes the question during character creation from being "Should I buy a Contact, or perhaps Two?" to "how many Contacts do I want?" for almost every player character.

Another argument for making Contacts cheaper is that as entities that exist within the game world, they can get killed, e.g. by the formal Enemies or informal foes of the PC, if attention is drawn to them.

I like the principle that anything that is easily loseable should be cheaper, which goes for all social traits.

Contacts, like all social traits, are also location-dependent. If you travel to the other end of the universe, voluntarily or otherwise, they cease to matter, whereas everything intrinsic you have stays with you. That's another reason to have them be cheaper.



I have Contacts very cheap in my homebrew RPG, Sagatafl, and also offer a wider range of types, including Contacts that will trade with the character on favourable terms (useful to buy several of these if, e.g., you're building a Norse sea trader), Contacts that will sell rare or illegal items (if you're an assassin, it's useful to know a reliable poison brewer) and with better ones being able to provide better stuff (stronger poison, rarer items, etc), Contacts that will provide skilled help (e.g. a back alley physician) with more skilled ones costing more, Gossips (not too good in the Loyalty department, but will proactively catch rumours useful to the character, or spread or twist rumours if asked), and even Mole Contacts, expensive insiders in actually or potentially hostile organizations ("I 'know' two guys in the KgB and a GRU asset").



As for GURPS, it seems to to a large extent still follow the "externalized skill" principle originating in Hero System, where the Contact really is just a skill that is beneficial to the character even though it isn't the character himself who has the skill, and since the skill is external and therefore must be reached (which takes time, and may require a bribe of sorts, and even then isn't always reachable from all points) it costs less than if the character actually has the skill in the normal way, perhaps especially for very high skill levels.

That never made much sense to me, so in Sagatafl I go with a less abstract paradigm that a Contact is an NPC that you know who is inclined to be helpful, and has one ability, or a set of related abilities, that are potentailly useful, plus some stats (mainly a Loyalty stat, e.g. to "check" if enemies try to bribe or coerce the Contact into betraying the character), and then I try to figure out how much that should cost in terms of character creation currency.

If there's a perceived need for an in-between case, between the single-skill Contact and the broadly skilled Contact Group, one solution is just to add an Enhancement to the Contact, perhaps +50% Two-Skill Contact (skills must be related).

Another is to say that it doesn't cost extra to define any Contact as a two-skill contact, but the effect is that effective skill is lower, with one skill being 1 lower and the other skill being two lower. Thus instead of having a one-skill Contact with effective skill 15, you define two related skills, one at 14 and the other at 13.

The benefit of the Enhancement is that you can apply it multiple times, e.g. to get the celebutante effect.

Another option is to start over from scratch, and define a levelled Perk. 1 CP gives you a Minor Contact, 2 CP gives you a Contact, 3 CP gives you a Major Contact.

Then you define a list of Boons. That's the part I'm not gonna do, I'm just sketching this out for the rest of you, if some of you want to use that in GURPS.

A Minor Contact lets you pick 3 Boons from the list, a Contact 7 Boons, and a Major Contact 15 Boons. Boons must always be related, which is one reason why you'll often want to buy several separate Contacts instead of just trying to squeeze everything you want into as few Major Contacts as possible.

This approach liberates you from the Contact-as-externalized-skill thinking, allowing all sorts of fun options, even player-suggested ones (if the person writing the list of Boons can't think of everything in advance).

Obvious Boons are Has Skill, The Had Skill is Better (can be taken multiple times even for the same skill), and either some kind of Realiability and Reachability dual-axis system similar to existing rules, or a Loyalty that that can be rolled for (personally, I think Loyalty is a more self-explanatory metric than Reliability), but a rules tinkerer will be able to think of many others.

In Sagatafl, I use a system of Contact Levels instead, with increasing cost (the first seven CLs for each Contact costs 4 points, next seven costs 6 points, next seven again 8 points...), each Contact type has a base cost, and can be improved in various ways during character creation, each such improvement having a cost in CLs.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Also you're wrong. The "effective" skill does reflect the income, status, and other skills the character might have. It's in the advantage description.

Yes. It's not my impression that GURPS' RAW wants each Contact to have a single skill of the same kinds that player characters and NPCs may have.

Specific skills are given, e.g. Streetwise, but the intent seems to me to be to use the one skill level as a general "the stuff he can do"-roll at a particular competence level, thus used more broadly, even for non-Group Contacts.

That opens up for players proposing seemingly weird Contact skills, basically make-up-your-own-stuff, such as a Celebutante skill for the Celebutante Contact.

I don't see any problem with that. It'd just be nice if the RAW was more clearly written, so as to clarify that yes, that's the intent, the designer doesn't think there's any harm in players being allowed to do that.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Anders

I just divide all Contact costs by 5.

I believe I know that when GURPS first introduced Contacts, in various supplements, they were very expensive.

Then at some point, either in later supplements or upon the publication of Compendium I or GURPS Basic Set 3rd Edition Revied (whichever of these came first), they were drastically reduced in cost. Possibly by a factor of 5.

You (and the OP at least in part) seem to suggest a further drastic cost reduction. Maybe as much as a factor of 25 relative to the initial cost (which I believe may have been in supplements such as GURPS Cyberpunk).

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Ms Celebutante isn't equipped to provide remote support. When she makes her appearance roll as an ally, she appears in the story and accompanies the character until the end of it (unless she dies) because that's how allies work. Now that could be the character getting constant "helpful" phone calls from her...but probably not and odds are the player doesn't want that either.

There's no implication that the Ally is leashed to the PC from appearance to disappearance. If her contribution is in person, but not in combat, there's no reason you can't take her with you when you need to get into an exclusive party, and leave her behind when you need to storm an enemy safehouse.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

There's no implication that the Ally is leashed to the PC from appearance to disappearance. If her contribution is in person, but not in combat, there's no reason you can't take her with you when you need to get into an exclusive party, and leave her behind when you need to storm an enemy safehouse.

Uh-hunh. What usually happens when you tell the sidekick to stay behind?

1. They do something stupid and get captured.
2. They don't do something stupid, and still get captured.